4. Exploring the Meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi for Counselling
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4 Exploring the Meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi for Counselling Alastair Crocket Abstract The NZAC Code of Ethics calls on counsellors to honour the Treaty of Waitangi. This article explores the meaning of the Treaty for counselling practice. This exploration considers but is not confined to the words used in the Mäori and English versions of the Treaty. It surveys three periods of Treaty history that move from initial cooperation through division and disparity to negotiation and restitution, and shows that this history has added to the meaning of the Treaty. It explores Treaty principles and biculturalism as vehicles for meaning. It offers a broad context for the pursuit of meaning which counsellors might apply in their practice, while also arguing that the meaning of the Treaty cannot be finally decided. Keywords: Treaty of Waitangi, Treaty history, Treaty meaning, biculturalism, counselling The New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC) Code of Ethics (2002) explicitly links counselling practice with the Treaty of Waitangi: This Code needs to be read in conjunction with the Treaty of Waitangi and New Zealand law. Counsellors shall seek to be informed about the meaning and implications of the Treaty of Waitangi for their work. They shall understand the principles of protection, participation and partnership with Maori. (p. 2) This article considers the first of these three matters that the Code requires counsellors to be informed about—meaning. It examines how counsellors might explore the meaning of the Treaty for counselling practice. An earlier article addressed the Treaty principle of partnership in relation to counselling practice (Crocket, 2009). 54 New Zealand Journal of Counselling 2013 Exploring the Meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi for Counselling The repositioning of the Treaty of Waitangi as the founding document of Aotearoa/ New Zealand over the last four decades has had significant political, social, and ideo- logical effects. These effects have been visible at the national (political) level as well as in myriad organisations. NZAC (2002) has followed the calls in Aotearoa/New Zealand for social practice to be shaped by the Treaty of Waitangi. This article seeks to add to the Treaty-based counselling practice literature (for example: Abbott & Durie, 1987; Addy, 2008; Campbell, 1990; Crocket, 2009, 2012; Davies, Elkington, & Winslade, 1993; Drury, 2007; M. Durie, 1999, 2007; Hepi & Denton, 2010; Hokowhitu, 2007; Lang, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2007; Manthei, 1990; Mila-Schaaf, 2010; Mulqueeney, 2012; Te Wiata & Crocket, 2011; Tutua-Nathan, 1989; Wadsworth, 1990a, 1990b; Webb, 2000) by offering a précis of Treaty scholarship to support counsellors in seeking meaning that they can apply in their practice. To understand the meaning and implications of the Treaty for counselling practice in Aotearoa/New Zealand it is important to consider the beliefs and motivations that led to its writing and signing, and the meanings that developed around it subsequently. Ultimately it is not possible to determine a single meaning of the Treaty (Pryor, 2008; Royal Commission on Social Policy, 1988; Turner, 1995). The Treaty of Waitangi becomes a social practice metaphor I begin with an historical overview of political and social responses to the Treaty of Waitangi. Since the mid-1970s, when the Treaty of Waitangi Act was passed, the Treaty of Waitangi has become central to debate and discussion about both the national identity of Aotearoa/New Zealand and the culturally based identities of individuals and groups. This debate has generally had a combative character (Norval, 2007). However, although it has been at times “angry talk” (Sharp, 1997), it has also carried other dimensions, taking place in conditions: in which there was enough division and dissension among people to make talk of justice necessary, but conditions too where there was enough of a sense of common membership of a political society to render such talk more than the empty rhetoric of enemies. (p. 21) These Treaty debates, although frequently heated, have generally been positively carried on within and between groups in a national context of connected identities. I now shift to consider the problematic language in the two Treaty versions and the history that followed its signing. VOLUME 33/1 55 Alastair Crocket The emergence of Treaty discourse During New Zealand’s history the Treaty has taken on a range of meanings. For a relatively brief time, from 1840 to 1852, it was a marker of an agreement between two peoples who approached each other with some degree of equality. Then, as the Treaty began to be disregarded by successive settler governments, it became a symbol for Mäori of their unrelenting resistance to colonial domination. Since the 1970s it has come to be seen as a guide to reconciliation between the Crown and Mäori (M. Durie, 1998). As I have indicated, the Treaty has also become a primary metaphor for social service practice. Today the Treaty of Waitangi is generally seen as the founding document (Royal Commission on Social Policy, 1988; Te Puni Kökiri, 2001) or central to the constitu - tional framework (Brookfield, 1999; Te Puni Kökiri, 2001) of Aotearoa/New Zealand. This position has been hard won and was only achieved through a series of moves over the last four decades. For the largest part of the preceding Treaty history the Crown, as the institution of government, and Päkehä, as the increasingly dominant cultural group, largely ignored the Treaty. 1840–1852: A time of cooperation The Treaty of Waitangi was signed within days of the arrival of the Crown’s emissary, Lieutenant Hobson, in February 1840. Haste and inadequate consultation were the hallmarks of the Treaty process and there was the added complication of linguistic and cultural misunderstanding. (M.Durie, 1998, p. 176) The first two of the three articles of the Treaty presented by Hobson contain significant differences of meaning between the originally drafted English version and the sub - sequently translated Mäori version (Orange, 1987). Henry Williams was the missionary who translated Hobson’s draft Treaty into Mäori (Biggs, 1989). Williams chose to translate sovereignty as käwanatanga rather than mana, which had been used in the 1835 Declaration of Independence, which he had also translated (Biggs, 1989). Käwanatanga is a missionary-invented word used previously in translations of the Bible into Mäori, but for Mäori it had a lesser meaning than sovereignty. Mana more closely translates as sovereignty (Biggs, 1989). It has been argued that if mana had been used in place of käwanatanga, Mäori would not have signed the Treaty; it was inconceivable that Mäori could agree to sign away their mana (Jackson, 1989, p. 2). 56 New Zealand Journal of Counselling 2013 Exploring the Meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi for Counselling In article two, “full and undisturbed possession” was translated as tino ranga - tiratanga. Tino rangatiratanga also implies sovereignty in addition to possession because it refers to “chieftainship,” the basis of Mäori sovereignty (Biggs, 1989). Today tino rangitiratanga is generally translated as either Mäori sovereignty or self-determination (Maaka & Fleras, 2005). Mäori rangatira at Waitangi did sign the Treaty after extensive debate. One promi- nent Mäori leader, Hone Heke, proclaimed that “the native mind cannot comprehend these things, they must trust to the advice of the missionaries” (Walker, 1990, p. 95). However, the missionary advice had a strong element of self-interest. Walker (1990) argues that Williams was anxious to secure sovereignty for the British at least in part to secure the extensive land holdings he had obtained to support his 11 children; his choice of particular Mäori words encouraged Mäori rangatira toward agreement with- out their full understanding of the Crown’s intentions. With undercurrents of haste, of missionary duplicity, of Mäori misunderstanding of the proposed Treaty’s purpose, and the confusion caused by inaccurate translation it might be asked why or how the Treaty has any significant status today. Sir Edward Durie, a former Chief Judge of the Mäori Land Court, has indicated that this is in part because at least New Zealand does have a treaty (E. Durie, 1990, p. 2). The existence of the Treaty has provided a focal point for relationships between Crown and Mäori with the potential to develop a justice-based rhetoric. Durie (1990) has written that the Crown saw it as a treaty of cession (of sovereignty), but that Mäori: saw themselves as entering into an alliance with the Queen in which the Queen would govern for the maintenance of peace and the control of unruly settlers, while Mäori would continue as before to govern themselves. (p. 2) After an initial period in which settlers and Mäori cooperated for mutual benefit (M. Durie, 1998), the political landscape changed radically in the late 1850s. After 1852: Division and disparity In the 1850s a second period of Treaty history began that was marked by “division and disparity” (M. Durie, 1998). A rapid decline of the Mäori population as a result of introduced diseases appeared to threaten Mäori survival (Walker, 1990), while simultaneously the settler population was rapidly increasing, bringing an attendant clamour from settlers seeking land to farm. The transfer of Crown sovereignty from Britain to a settler government in 1852 gave settlers the opportunity to repudiate the Treaty under the mantle of legitimate government (Ward, 1999). This transfer of VOLUME 33/1 57 Alastair Crocket power from an imperial colonial authority to a local colonial authority completed a “revolution” in which greater authority was taken by the Crown than Mäori had understood to be inherent in the treaty that had legitimated the Crown claim to either sovereignty or käwanatanga (Brookfield, 1999). These moves by the settler government reached a nadir with the judgement by Chief Justice Prendergast in 1877 that the Treaty “was a mere nullity” (as cited in Dawson, 2001, p.